Joumana Altallal was born in Baghdad to Iraqi and Lebanese parents. She is a recent graduate of the University of Virginia and is currently a first year MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Michigan. She is a Writer-in-Residence with Citywide Poets and leads an after-school poetry program for high school students in Metro Detroit. Her work appears in the Virginia Literary Review, Jaffat al Aqlam, and Poets Reading the News, among others.